Are your Business Assets Protected?

Should you care about yet another acronym? Yes, this one is very important folks.

The PPSR, which stands for the Personal Property Securities Register, is the national register where details of security interests in personal property can be registered and searched. Basically if you don’t register your interests in the personal assets that you rent, hire or loan to someone else, you could lose your property!

What is defined as personal property?

Personal property is basically anything other than land owned by you. Common property items include vehicles, boats, plant and machinery, caravans, trailers, art, livestock, crops, shares. It also includes non-tangible items such as intellectual property and investment instruments.

It’s important to register such property on the PPSR to identify you or your company as its rightful owner.

…when it all goes wrong

GE International made a costly mistake when the Supreme Court of NSW recently found they failed to register their interest in four mobile gas turbines, reportedly worth $50M, which they owned and had leased to Forge Group Power.

Forge Group, which had operations in WA, went into administration and then liquidation in 2014 and the Court vested in Forge Group Power under the power of the administrators as there was no public register by GE for the turbines. Therefore, Forge was granted ownership of them over GE.

…to do

So if you own property that you lease or rent to others and this property is the subject of a PPS Lease, you need to urgently review your current lease or rental arrangements and register your interests on the PPSR. By doing so you will be able to defeat any claim to your property by an administrator or liquidator should your lessee get into financial trouble.

Visit www.ppsr.com.au for more details and how to register or call Lejo or Sue in the office on (08)9481 0746.